January 09, 2008
Servanthood
If it were possible to take the pulse of a church’s servanthood, I think my church would need to call for the EMT’s to start CPR. Don’t get me wrong we have people willing to serve, it’s just that the places of service have been reassigned, restructured or eliminated all together. A couple months ago I called a ministry team leader for help with moving furniture and he said, “We don’t do that any more. Call the staff…they’ve taken over all the ministries.” I could hear the hurt in his voice. I think if you suppress a servant long enough he’ll start loosing his desire to serve and he just might quit serving all together. If I were this ex-ministry team leader I’d be struggling to follow Paul’s advice to, ‘serve as though we were serving the Lord’.
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Gail;
-----Everyone leading at your church is enthusiastic for the Lord. Although that is good, it is a sad place to stop. Enthusiasm must be combined with intelligence, wisdom, and humility. None of the courses of action initiated by the leaders since the late 90’s have exhibited the latter. Humility and wisdom deal with the simplicity of perspective, the ability to see that a tree is basically green and to deal with it accordingly. Intelligence will factor in any adjustment for it’s being yellow in the Fall and bare in the Winter. Enthusiasm is simply for application of whatever is determined. If what is determined is effective, enthusiasm will increase its results. But if it is defective, it will increase the destruction.
-----If Satan were an idiot, he would use misguided enthusiasm to destroy a church’s very existence. But he is no idiot. He knows that God’s effort grows wherever it can gain ground. And if your church were razed and discarded entirely, there would be bare ground for God to bring up something in its place. So Satan weedizes it into a giant space waster. Its good, nutritious fruit he plasticizes. Its tall strong stalk he twists and shrivels. Oh, but he will allow plenty of color and flare to remain in its appearance, because these will attract others to come and swallow its plastic product.
-----What teaching ignores the thoughts and feelings of others? When Jesus said, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” was He referring to making demands upon your neighbor to become like yourself, or was He referring to treating your neighbor as carefully and respectfully as you treat yourself? The humility and wisdom leading your church has been insufficient to see the green of this tree. The intelligence there has been captured by enthusiasm and has damaged the church’s crop of fruit and warped its basic understanding of love. The leaders were so sure they knew everything about how to surge the gospel across this mountain valley they refused to consider the color God had made the tree. Their programs hang in its branches like plastic bags, and the gospel they demonstrate fits its feet like socks on a rooster. What surprise is there if any intelligence, wisdom, and humility remaining in the servanthood at your church simply steps aside to watch the staff puff up its own plastic and strut around in its own socks. Eventually though, the true servants will find a way and a place to serve, maybe down the street where the fruit is fruitier.
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